The folks at soon-to-be-launched OnlyUp.org affectionately ask, <30? Part of the nonprofit sector and/or have big plans to make change in the social justice movement?
They’re building an online community of young people involved in the nonprofit sector, and they want you to be part of it.
In their own words:
OnlyUp is an organization that helps nonprofits prepare for the next generation of leaders through consultations, awards, and community-coalition building.
Young people have the vision and energy needed to revolutionize social justice organizations. Amplifying their voice and advocating for their needs will help revitalize the nonprofit sector.
To this end, OnlyUp plans to:
Publish a blog for information sharing, web newsletters to organize advocacy, and mobilize an active membership database
Provide constructive analysis of how nonprofits incorporate young people in goal creation and execution of their work
Connect young people with quality opportunities so they may learn from and contribute to their field: The website will include job listings from organizations that have established histories of providing real opportunities for young people
Last week we hosted a sold-out webinar on using Facebook for community building and nonprofit fundraising. Well, technically it wasn’t sold out because it was free, but the session was completely full! If you missed it or couldn’t get in, you can see slides and audio for the session here.
During the session, we talked about Facebook Pages (aka fan pages) and why they’re good for nonprofit organizations. A Facebook Page is your nonprofit’s official presence on Facebook, and you can use it to send an unlimited number of messages to your fans, add applications, and track metrics (like how many people visit your Page). For more on why you might want to have an official presence on Facebook, check out our webinar.
One thing we didn’t get to in the webinar was the topic of adding “Favorite Pages” to your nonprofit’s Facebook Page. People who like your nonprofit’s Page on Facebook can become your fans, but did you know that you can connect to other nonprofits and organizations on Facebook through your Facebook Page? Here’s how:
1: Find a Page you want to add to your Favorites:
2. Select where you want to have the Page appear (if you have more than one Page on Facebook, you’ll need to choose one of them from the drop-down menu):
3. Voila! The Page now appears in the “Favorite Pages” box on your nonprofit Page:
In addition to the Elizabeth Peabody House (pictured above), we just added Will Work for Social Change, an organization dedicated to accelerating positive change by serving the talent-related needs of social entrepreneurs, to Firstgiving’s Favorite Pages. Visit our Facebook Page to see more of our favorite Pages or to become a fan!
The Social Venture Network has been hard at work, connecting and building a community of business and non-profit leaders all over the U.S. and Canada. They’re facilitating discussions about sustainability and providing resources for leaders engaged in socially responsible innovation in their areas of expertise. These folks also sponsor an annual SVN Innovation Award, and applications for the 2009 Award are being accepted through June 15. You can read more about the award and download the application here.
What is the SVN Innovation Award for?
As SVN looks to the future, we’re committed to inspiring and supporting the next generation of innovative, socially responsible business and nonprofit entrepreneurs. That’s why we created the Innovation Awards. The goal of the Awards program is to recognize the leaders of emerging enterprises, bring them into the SVN community, and give them access to a network of 500 successful socially responsible business and nonprofit leaders, investors, and other resources and connections that can help them achieve success with their own enterprise.
Are you eligible?
Applicants must currently hold positions as C-level executives (CEOs, executive directors, founders, etc.) of businesses or nonprofit organizations implementing an idea that is having a positive social or environmental impact on the business sector.
Eligible applicants will have started implementing their new idea fewer than five years ago, and their business or organization must be less than 5 years old.
Even if you aren’t eligible for the award this year, you might want to subscribe to or even submit something to their Enewsletter, here.
As you may know, the Firstgiving team is all about feedback and listening and research and data. It’s part of what has made us successful. So we’d like to ask you, our blog readers, to tell us a little about yourselves so we can improve our blog and our service in general. Please take our super-quick blog reader survey. As an incentive, we’ll draw two surveys at random and give each one their choice of a $25 donation to any US charity or a $25 Amazon gift certificate. Thanks for your feedback! We’ll do the drawing in a week, so take the survey today.
While doing some research for World Malaria Day last week, we came across some GOOD online journalism from the folks at GOOD Magazine. Like Firstgiving, GOOD helps non-profits raise money online (their magazine subscription fees go straight to non-profit organizations). In their own words,
GOOD is a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 we’ve been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn.
The GOOD people (how would you like to be described like that?!) have conversations going about all kinds of nationally and globally-relevant causes, like the environment, public health, and economic development. When you subscribe to the magazine, 100% of your subscription fee goes to a non-profit organization of your choice. From the GOOD website, you can also can navigate to their blog, recent articles, and event listings.
Just to give you a taste, here’s an example of some of the cool content on their site (this particular chart is an “infographic,” a visual representation of cause-related data):
If you work for a non-profit and want to learn more about partnering with GOOD magazine, you can contact them at partners@goodinc.com.
Now that March has gone out like a lamb, we’d like to tell you about this month’s causes and awarenesses. As always, we’ve linked to some non-profits we know doing work in these areas to help you get started with fundraising. April is:
It’s happening tomorrow at 8.30 PM local time, wherever you are on earth. Turn off your lights! That’s all. We usually stay out of the office on Saturdays, so the lights will already be out at Firstgiving Towers, but a bunch of us will be observing Earth Hour in the privacy of our own homes.
What is Earth Hour, exactly? It’s a virtual event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. Here’s how they describe it:
This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.
For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.
The remarkable thing is that Earth Hour grew from one city’s initiative in 2007 to a global event with over 50 million participants in 2008. And this growth was fueled primarily by social media and grassroots online networking with blogs like this one.
If your computer has a decent battery life, you can keep in touch with the global community during Earth Hour (or just follow participants in other time zones) by blogging, tweeting, photographing and video-ing. More information is at the Earth Hour website, here. And check out these fundraisers who are going the extra mile to raise money for the Earth Hour’s sponsoring organization, the World Wildlife Fund.
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